"Red Saturday:" The Great Fire of 1907

(Beaufort District Collection)

January 19, 1907 was a very important date in the history of the City of Beaufort as a fire purportedly caused by three little boys naughtily smoking cigarettes behind F.W. Scheper's Barn on the corner of Bay and Carteret Streets ended up burning down a good portion of the town. 



The fire was noticed about 1:30pm on that Saturday and fanned by stiff winds from the southwest. Windblown embers ignited other structures spreading the fire rapidly and with catastrophic consequences. 

Ironically the Beaufort Gazette January 19, 1907 issue contained a front page notice about a small "Fire on the Bay" the previous day. That fire occurred at George Waterhouse's cotton gin and "was put out by the women operatives at once and little damage done."

Read more about "Red Saturday" in a series of posts to our BDCBCL Wordpress blog last January. https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/. If you'd like for the news to unfold now as it did 112 years ago: 

Savannah Morning News, January 20, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/20/savannah-morning-news-coverage-january-20-1907-beaufort-fire/

Savannah Morning News, January 21, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/savannah-morning-news-january-21-1907-coverage-of-the-beaufort-fire/ 

Savannah Morning News, January 22, 1907 https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/reports-about-the-beaufort-fire-on-january-22-1907/

Beaufort Gazette coverage of the catastrophic blaze begins on January 24, 1907 as it was only a weekly newspaper at the time. The issue had extensive coverage so the content is broken into a series of BDCBCL blog posts:  


* Beaufort Fire, Main Article
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire/


* "Fire Notes A" 
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/27/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-fire-notes-a/

* "Mass Meeting" (Beaufortonians were incensed about what the Savannah Morning News had written)
https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/01/31/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-mass-meeting/

* "Fire Notes B" mention the specific circumstances of some of the townspeople 

https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/02/02/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-fire-notes-b/ 

* "Death of William Bennett" was the most unfortunate consequences of the blaze https://bdcbcl.wordpress.com/2018/02/07/beaufort-gazette-coverage-january-24-1907-beaufort-fire-death-of-william-bennett/

Reminder: The Library system will be closed Monday, January 21, 2019 in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Regular hours resume Tuesday, January 22, 2019.

MayDay 2018

Preservation Week and MayDay activities highlight strategies to extend the usability of cultural heritage materials in daily life as well as in the wake of disaster. MayDay encourages cultural institutions to do one simple activity to protect the art, artifacts, records, and historic structures they hold in trust. The Beaufort District Collection has been participating in MayDay since 2008.

The Society of American Archivists (SAA) created the MayDay initiative in 2006 to better protect cultural heritage materials from disasters. Continuing in the tradition established by SAA and Heritage Preservation, the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (FAIC) took on the task in 2016 of encouraging libraries, museums, archives, historical societies, and preservation organizations to set aside May 1 to participate in MayDay. MayDay is a time when archivists and other cultural heritage professionals take personal and professional responsibility for doing something simple – something that can be accomplished in a day but that can have a significant impact on an individual’s or a repository’s ability to respond to emergency circumstances. By extension, we want to encourage our readers to make May 1 the day that you do just one thing to improve the status of your family treasures in case of an emergency event. 

Beaufort District is not immune to disasters: The earth moved beneath us in the 1886 Earthquake; Hurricanes frequent the area more often that the tourist brochures may indicate (ones in 1893, 1911, 1940, 1959, 2016 come immediately to mind); Fires consumed residential homes and commercial districts in 1863 Bluffton and 1907 Beaufort; Tornadoes have caused death and destruction locally in the past. Given that life happens on a daily basis and disaster is too often a part of life, then we must ready ourselves for the likelihood that today a disaster could befall us and try to prepare as best we can to mitigate the risks, survive the event and go on to thrive in its aftermath.

A great place to start is to learn all you can about preservation and risk mitigation. Here are just a few recommended web resources to get your started on the path towards protecting your own family treasures:

• "Save Your Treasures the Right Way" by Heritage Preservation, provides advice on how to best cope with natural disasters.  
• Because we live in a county with only Zone A hurricane evacuation codes, you will need to think ahead about what you'll need to take with you the next time we are under hurricane threat. The Georgia Archives created a wonderful checklist in its "Essential Records for Families" brochure.
• A somewhat similar guide by FEMA "Emergency Financial First Aid Kit"  is on the Beaufort County Emergency Management Division website.
• To educate yourself about how to better prepare yourself and your family, FEMA offers a host of resources on their "Are You Ready" website. 
• Local Emergency management offices can help identify the hazards in your area and outline the local plans and recommendations for each. Be sure to share the hazard-specific information with family members and include pertinent materials in your family disaster plan.

Remember, all that is asked of you is to take one simple - completed in a day - step to increase your emergency preparedness and thereby protect your family treasures.

Fire Severely Damages Library at CIU

One never knows when tragedy will strike. On May 8th, it struck Columbia International University's G. Allen Fleece Library.

According to Columbia Fire Chief, Aubrey Jenkins, the G. Allen Fleece Library building on the Columbia International University campus in our capitol city and "nearly every book in the building was probably affected in some way by heat, smoke or fire damage." The damage to the Fleece Library and its collection is estimated at $2.5 million.

Read The State newspaper report about the fire. To see images of the fire and its aftermath, CIU has posted photographs in its FLICKR account.

Fires are scary. Aftermaths of fires are scary.

The Emergency Team at the Beaufort County Library has recently updated our disaster plans as instructed by the County's Emergency Management department. We meet throughout the year to check our plan and tweak it in light of new circumstances or information. We schedule fire drills at each of our locations conducted by Fire District staff. We coordinate a staff training session dealing with workplace safety or recovery activities at least annually. It is an active, thoughtful, pro-active team effort. I am proud to work with colleagues Dennis Adams, Laura Hayden, and Stuart Forrest on the Library's Emergency/Disaster Response team chaired by Miriam Mitchell.

We worked hard in March and April to update our plans. Our aim is a plan that will protect life and our collections. Our intent is to efficiently execute the plan should we have to put it into action. Of course, we all have our fingers crossed that we won't have to use it at all -- ever! But isn't it much better to have a disaster recovery plan and not need it, than to need one and not have it?

Every emergency situation has as its first priority: Minimize risk to human life. There is likely to be glass and water puddled throughout the building after the fire fighters leave. Falling down and breaking your leg or neck would not be a good thing to do. Getting electrocuted would not be a pleasant shocking experience. The Library aims to protect human life first, then move on to protecting library "stuff."

However, one cannot lollygag with starting recovery efforts, particularly in libraries, because of what we store: lots and lots of books, papers, art, and audio-visual materials just waiting to decay with mold, mildew, and disintegration of substrates. Therefore, time is of the essence.

The window for preventing a mold breakout is less than 48 hours. And a mold outbreak is dangerous for the recovery of materials plus it's a health hazard for humans. In the case of mold outbreaks, prevention is worth more than a pound of cure -- it can also mean the difference between a library getting up and running within a few days to a month, a library having to gut its entire collection and starting over -- perhaps in an another location with all new materials -- or a library closing down altogether forever.

Arm yourself with information on what to do in case a fire breaks out at your home and damages your family treasures. To learn about how to recover book materials damaged by fire, smoke, or heat, study the Northeast Conservation Center online pamphlet "Emergency Salvage of Wet Books and Records."

Anniversary of Devastating Fire of 1907

Link updated 14 December 2023 - gmcordial

January 19, 1907 was a very important date for Beaufort. Read transcriptions of contemporary newspaper articles online about the consuming fire that burned down a good portion of the town. The fire was caused by three little boys who were sneakingly smoking cigarettes behind the Scheper's Barn on Bay Street. Come visit the Beaufort District Collection to learn more through our vertical file "Fires -- Fire of 1907."

If you're looking for a program to cheer your mid-winter doldrums, drop by for the first BDC sponsored "Local History 2010" program. Gerhard Spieler is sure to share lots of information about the 1907 fire during the course of his talk on the "History of Bay Street, 1711 - 2010" at the Library on Wed., Jan. 27th beginning at 1 pm. We'd love to see you.

Image of destruction near intersection of Bay and Scott Street in the holdings of the Beaufort District Collection.